Philosopher Promotes Determinism

I mentioned Dr. Bee promoting superdeteriminism, and philospher Stephen Maitzen also promotes determinism.

Here is his core argument:

You decided to read this post. Suppose your decision wasn’t necessitated by the prior conditions: you might have decided not to read this post despite everything being exactly as it was. If we delve into the question “Why did you decide to read this post rather than not ‒ what made the difference?”, at some stage in our ever-deeper inquiry the answer is nothing. That seems to me a perfect example of magic: there was a difference (you decided one way rather than another), but literally nothing made the difference.

If you reject magical thinking, then you ought to accept determinism.

In other words, he just declares non-determinism to be magic.

Einstein believed in determinism, but most physicists do not. Certainly nothing in textbook physics requires determinism, and many believe it is incompatible with quantum mechanics. But Maitzen argues:

Contrary to what you may have heard, determinism does not conflict with current physics. ...

One such deterministic theory is Bohmian mechanics, named for the physicist David Bohm. ...

Misinformed people say that the experimental violations of Bell’s Theorem rule out deterministic physics. Bell himself knew better: what they rule out is physics that’s both deterministic and local. Bohmian mechanics survives because it’s nonlocal, but (as Bell showed) so is quantum mechanics itself.

No, this is misinformed. Nearly all physicists reject Bohmian mechanics because it is nonlocal, and I would call it magic.

Quantum mechanics is local as far as we know. Quantum field theory is local.

Some people interpret Bell's inequality as saying quantum mechanics must be indeterministic. That appears to be the case, but there is always the possibility of some underlying deterministic theory.

Any indeterministic theory could have an underlying deterministic theory.

There is no hope of science proving determinism, so why would anyone believe in it? If you accept determinism, then you are just a cog in a machine, with no free will or any purpose to life. People make choices all the time, and it is almost impossible to live life as if all those choices are determined. I doubt that anyone can do it, except maybe for babies, comatose patients, and schizophrenics.